Does the location of a citation on a page have any relivance?
-
We have been working on local SEO quite a lot for our small business, trying to understand why we are consistantly outranked by our competators. I understand there are many factors at play here.
I realize that DA & PA, Places page optimization, and on page optimization also play a role, but for the purpose of this question i would like to focus on just one factor: citations.
From your experiance with local SEO do you find that a citation that is located closer to the top of the page holds more weight than a citation buried further down a page?
Here is an example:
http://www.yellowpages.ca/search/si/1/Storage-Self+Service/Toronto+ON/in this case the people paying for the priority positions on that page are right at the top of the page, rather than buried 5 pages into the results. in fact they are right at the top of each page of the results, so over and over again they are above the free listings.
I have heard that google considers the value of a link based on its position on the page. So would it be safe to assume that google also considers the value of a citation based on its position on the page?
Thank you for your time,
Storwell -
I have been enjoying your comments more and more. It is very clear you are reading great articles and expanding your knowledge every day.
I had not read the article you shared before now. I enjoyed it very much.
Matt Cutt's video is from Aug 2009. He shared that originally links were treated equally but Google's link analysis was growing and becoming more sophisticated. The article you referenced was written Mar 27, 2010.
This type of article is exactly why I am a member here at SEOmoz. That article represents the thorough work and analysis of SEO experts on the valuation of links. It's a great article. I am not 100% confident in their findings, but they are very logical and I will accept them and incorporate them in my future efforts.
So it appears you answered your own question, and thank you for taking the time to share the results.
-
that is not exactly what i got from reading this: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links
-
In short, most links on a page have equal value. Google does reserve the right to weigh links, but overall I have not seen any indication that links at the top of a page are weighed higher then a link at the bottom of a page.
A recently noted exception would be links in footers. Matt Cutts talks about footer links and you can also see how potentially links in the main content area can be worth more then links on sidebars in the future.
-
Doesn't this completely contradict Google's motivations?
It seems that if this was the case, then google could easily be gamed by purchasing position on all these local directories. Wouldn't this be the opposite of what google wants?
In the case of links, google does their very best to ignore paid links.
Why would they turn around and give benefit to paid citations?
-
Not only are they above the free listings but they are on every page at the top. Thus citing your example of 5 pages they would have 5 citations; Where a free listing would only appear on one.
In addition, Google has a crawl budget - how long they spend on a site and page. If these limits are reached there is a possibility that the lower listings don't get crawled or acknowledged especially if they are buried deep into the navigation levels of a site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking App Store page in Google
Hey - has anyone had any experience in getting their App Store listing page to rank highly in Google for one of their primary keywords? If so, have you been successful and have you any pointers?
Image & Video Optimization | | GrowTraffic0 -
What is the SEO value of images of geographic areas (states, counties, cities) on a page?
We want to put images for specific geographic locations on some new pages we are building and I am wondering if: A) What the SEO value of adding these images would be? B) Suggested Sources for the images. Right now we are looking at using panoramio, but would love some MOZ community advice! Thank you for your help MOZ Community!
Image & Video Optimization | | AlyssaN0 -
Local Search for Multiple Locations
Hi Folks, The company I work for is based in Kendal in Cumbria in the United Kingdom (that's our head office) but as we are a training company and we have training locations all over the UK, how would I go about updating the local listings to reflect this. I'd like to specifically target our London based venues. Any help much appreciated. Gaz
Image & Video Optimization | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Google+ Business Page Location Problem
I run a business in the St. Louis area. Oddly, St. Louis is broken up into more than 100 municipalities. Google keeps listing my plus page by the small municipality I am in within St. Louis, which limits my ability to show up in the St. Louis local search results. However, other businesses in town are being listed under St. Louis instead of their municipality. Any ideas on how to change this? When I go in and try to change it myself, it just stays the same. Thanks, Steve
Image & Video Optimization | | BardolLawFirm0 -
Google+ Places Page Showing Wrong Information
Hi There, I have a client who's runs three nuseries (pre schools) A, B and C and has three differen googe+ pages all with different addresses so no problem there. However I noticed that if I clicked on on of them in the Google places account settings listing A would show the details of listing B and not it's own. Thinking this was a glitch I deleted listing A and was about to set up another one. I entered the phone number and it brought up the details to the listing B as sharing the same phone number. Is this is what's causing the issue? Can businesses share the same phone number in the same locality and have two different listings, despite having two different addresses? Kind Regards Neil
Image & Video Optimization | | jmaycock0 -
Google+ Local Page Wrong Categories
The "new" Google+ Local page for one of my clients is not showing the correct Business Categories. Seems like it reverted to an old Category before we revised. I looked in my Google Places dashboard and the correct Categories are there. They do not have a Google+ Profile yet. Any suggestions? They also seem to have disappeared for those categories we used to rank in the top three in Google Places results.
Image & Video Optimization | | Reportcard0 -
I understand that in addition to video sitemaps, a transcription of a video, if presented properly will help google and may help SEO. I cannot find information on the basics to add transcription properly to a page. Advice or direction appreciated.
Looking for guidance or information on the nuts and bolts of how to use transcriptions with video.
Image & Video Optimization | | hughman0 -
Local SEO - our company is in 2 very different locations
Hi, Our company nlpca.com is in 2 locations. It's doing really well in San Francisco, California But we've opened a 2nd location in Salt Lake City, Utah The problem is that our site is all about San Francisco, California. Utah is just as important as San Francisco to us and we need to start tailoring to both. People from Utah say they are confused because our site is so tailored to California. Even our domain name is the keyword "NLP" combined with the state initial "CA" for California. A new domain is not an option. One thing we are thinking of doing is changing our header to say "The NLP and Coaching Institute and the NLP Institute of California". It would say both of our company names and hopefully the first would catch the Utah people. But I don't think it's just our banner. Can you take a look at our site and tell us how to tailor to both locations and keep our current working optimization for San Francisco, California? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0